philosophy Philosophy (from , ) is the systematized study of general and fundamental questions, such as those about existence, reason, knowledge, values, mind, and language. Such questions are often posed as problems to be studied or resolved. Some ...

, condition of possibility (german: Bedingungen der Möglichkeit) is a concept made popular by the German philosopher

Immanuel Kant Immanuel Kant (, , ; 22 April 1724 – 12 February 1804) was a German philosopher and one of the central Enlightenment thinkers. Born in Königsberg, Kant's comprehensive and systematic works in epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, and ...

, and is an important part of his philosophy. A condition of possibility is a necessary framework for the possible appearance of a given list of entities. It is often used in contrast to the unilateral

causality Causality (also referred to as causation, or cause and effect) is influence by which one event, process, state, or object (''a'' ''cause'') contributes to the production of another event, process, state, or object (an ''effect'') where the cau ...

concept, or even to the notion of

interaction Interaction is action that occurs between two or more objects, with broad use in philosophy and the sciences. It may refer to: Science * Interaction hypothesis, a theory of second language acquisition * Interaction (statistics) * Interactions o ...

. For example, consider a cube made by an artisan. All cubes are

three-dimensional Three-dimensional space (also: 3D space, 3-space or, rarely, tri-dimensional space) is a geometric setting in which three values (called ''parameters'') are required to determine the position of an element (i.e., point). This is the informal ...

. If an object is three-dimensional, then it is an extended object. But extension is an impossibility without

space Space is the boundless three-dimensional extent in which objects and events have relative position and direction. In classical physics, physical space is often conceived in three linear dimensions, although modern physicists usually consider ...

. Therefore, space is a ''condition of possibility'' because it is a

necessary condition In logic and mathematics, necessity and sufficiency are terms used to describe a conditional or implicational relationship between two statements. For example, in the conditional statement: "If then ", is necessary for , because the truth of ...

for the existence of cubes to be possible. Note, however, that space did not cause the cube, but that the artisan did, and that the cube and space are distinct entities, so space is not part of the definition of cube. From

Plato Plato ( ; grc-gre, Πλάτων ; 428/427 or 424/423 – 348/347 BC) was a Greek philosopher born in Athens during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. He founded the Platonist school of thought and the Academy, the first institution ...

to Descartes, what was presented by the senses was deemed illusory and . It was believed that the perceptions ought to be overcome to grasp the

thing-in-itself In Kantian philosophy, the thing-in-itself (german: Ding an sich) is the status of objects as they are, independent of representation and observation. The concept of the thing-in-itself was introduced by the German philosopher Immanuel Kant, and ...

, the essential essence, also known as Plato's

allegory of the cave The Allegory of the Cave, or Plato's Cave, is an allegory presented by the Ancient Greece, Greek philosopher Plato in his work ''Republic (Plato), Republic'' (514a–520a) to compare "the effect of education (Wiktionary:παιδεία, παιδ ...

. With Kant comes a transition in philosophy from this dichotomy to the dichotomy of the /. There is no longer any higher essence behind the . It is what it is, a brute fact, and what one must now examine is the conditions that are necessary for its appearance. Immanuel Kant does just this in the Transcendental Aesthetic, when he examines the necessary conditions for the synthetic ''

a priori ("from the earlier") and ("from the later") are Latin phrases used in philosophy to distinguish types of knowledge, justification, or argument by their reliance on empirical evidence or experience. knowledge is independent from current ex ...

'' cognition of

mathematics Mathematics is an area of knowledge that includes the topics of numbers, formulas and related structures, shapes and the spaces in which they are contained, and quantities and their changes. These topics are represented in modern mathematics ...

. But Kant ''was'' , so he still maintains the phenomenon/noumenon dichotomy, but what he did achieve was to render Noumena as unknowable and irrelevant. Foucault would come to adapt it in a

historical History (derived ) is the systematic study and the documentation of the human activity. The time period of event before the invention of writing systems is considered prehistory. "History" is an umbrella term comprising past events as well ...

sense through the concept of "

episteme In philosophy, episteme (; french: épistémè) is a term that refers to a principle system of understanding (i.e., knowledge), such as scientific knowledge or practical knowledge. The term comes from the Ancient Greek verb grc, ἐπῐ́στ ...

what I am attempting to bring to light is the epistemological field, the ''épistémè'' in which knowledge, envisaged apart from all criteria having reference to its rational value or to its objective forms, grounds its positivity and thereby manifests a history which is not that of its growing perfection, but rather that of its conditions of possibility; in this account, what should appear are those configurations within the space of knowledge which have given rise to the diverse forms of empirical science. Such an enterprise is not so much a history, in the traditional meaning of that word, as an ‘archaeology’.

References

* . Philosophy of science Possibility Concepts in epistemology {{science-philo-stub